Jim Williams profile picture

Jim Williams

With matters like these to think about, there was little time for thoughts of Jim Williams. John Ber

About Me

- So smart I'm stupid- Madly in love with my wife- Great dancer (if you happen to like quickstep or mambo)- Author of 8 published novels.- Nominee for Booker Prixe (failed, damn it!)- Lead singer with the world's only Mahatma Gandhi Tribute Band (OK, I lied about that one.)- I'd like to be Pope.- Own teeth- Someone else's hair.- NO COLOSTOMY BAG !!!!!!

My Interests

I enjoy pretty much anything, if I am doing it with my wife. We like country walking, the theatre, films, art galleries, antiques, and ballet. We dance every time we get a chance: both Latin and ballroom. We've forgotten all the routines we ever learned and just mug our way through it.

I'd like to meet:

I'd like to have met Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. Also Stephen J Gould, the evolutionary biologist. Smith was a likeable, exhuberant phony; and, if I had more courage and fewer morals, I think I could be one. Gould is a beautiful writer and I admire his books for their intelligence, intellectual honesty (except his doctrine of NOMA, which is an amiable falsehood)and liberal humaneness. I'd like to see my father again; Lionel Trippett, the literary pornographer; Fabulous Fred Day (who recited Rudyard Kipling's poems when drunk; and my former agent James Hale, who was loved by all. I don't pay attention to modern celebrities; don't know who they are;and in general don't admire them.

Music:

Dance music of the thirties to the fifties: Gershwin, Irving Berlin and so forth. Also tango: particularly the nuevo tango of Astor Piazzola. I have a weakness for French chansons of the mid twentieth century, especially Charles Trenet. The Marriage of Figaro almost brings me to tears.

Movies:

Casablanca - Now Voyager - Sunset Boulevard - Some like It Hot - The Producers - Spartacus - Pulp Fiction - Life of Brian - Assassination Tango - The Murder Of A Chinese Bookie

Television:

I don't watch much television. I don't like reality shows. I admire American crime drama such as CSI for its efficient story-telling; I like more or less anything HBO does. I love programmes in which bright old people reminisce about their lives. I don't think any other medium serves them so well.

Books:

War And Peace - Dickens - Evelyn Waugh - Earthly Powers - A Dance To The Music Of Time - Le Grand Meaulnes - books by Marcel Pagnol - Proust - Civilisation And the Rise Of Capitalism - American crime novels - Agatha Christie (which I read also in French, German and Spanish to keep my hand in)and, lately, popular science, especially Stephen J Gould

Heroes:

I don't really go in for heroes. I admire people I know in the round, which is why I love and respect my brother Denis and my wife. Also my sisters- and brothers-in-law and my sister Ann. They haven't achieved anything remarkable, but, with few resources, they've lived decent lives and are a blessing to other people.

My Blog

THE HOLY TELEPHONE DIRECTORY OF THE PROPHET JIM

Being a writer, linguist and lawyer, I'm interested in the interpretation of documents.  I'm continually surprised at our willingness to accept the truth of statements simply because they appear ...
Posted by Jim Williams on Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:15:00 PST

A LAUGH AT MY EXPENSE

This year [2007] I self-published my autobiography, A MESSAGE TO THE CHILDREN, largely for the benefit of my family and friends, though I think it has some wider interest because it's in the form of a...
Posted by Jim Williams on Mon, 24 Dec 2007 04:19:00 PST

A NOBLE LADY AND HER LOVER, THE PRIEST

Some kind friends often lend us their cottage in a small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees on the French side.  This is an area haunted by the tragedy of the crusade waged by the Roman Cat...
Posted by Jim Williams on Mon, 24 Dec 2007 04:08:00 PST

TAKING OLD LADIES TO THE TOILET

I'm very fond of my sisters-in-law.  They are the best: honest, hard-working and kind.  My wife is of the same stock and, by all accounts, so was their mother, Ada. My wife's family is of ...
Posted by Jim Williams on Sun, 16 Dec 2007 12:22:00 PST

SURVIVING SIXTY

I remember my father's sixtieth birthday party.  It was thirty-one years ago  or "yesterday" to use the technical term.  He was a lively, vigorous man, but I had the common suspicion of the...
Posted by Jim Williams on Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:29:00 PST

FLYING WITH MONKEYS

It's 1991 and here I am in Delhi for the first time with my Indian lawyer, Mr.  Ratnadatta, on the lookout for a likely fellow to name as our candidate on a three-man arbitration panel. ...
Posted by Jim Williams on Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:44:00 PST

LUNCH WITH THE KING OF NIGERIA

" You're having lunch with the King of Nigeria," says my secretary (she can't pronounce his native title, and I won't for reasons of discretion). "Uh, huh?"  Well, in my time I've been drinkin...
Posted by Jim Williams on Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:33:00 PST

JOLLY CUM WATER

On the Sunday following my birthday we threw a party for family and a few neighbours, fifty or sixty of us.  I may be the guest of honour, but the truth is that I get to be headwaiter and nary ...
Posted by Jim Williams on Mon, 10 Sep 2007 10:43:00 PST

LIVING IN THE PAST?

At the moment, as I drive to work, I'm listening to a tape of Simon Callow reading Swann's Way. Proust is a taste most people never acquire: he remains among those authors acknowledged as great, but i...
Posted by Jim Williams on Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:24:00 PST

A FINE BALANCE

A few years ago the Indian writer, Rohinton Mistry, wrote a lovely book, A FINE BALANCE.  It's set in Bombay in the 1950s and contains a wonderful cast of characters, a middle-class lady fallen o...
Posted by Jim Williams on Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:35:00 PST